Torn Interview

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Lead designer David Maldonado tears up some new info on Torn, Black Isle's upcoming RPG.

By IGN Staff

A few weeks ago at the Game Developer's Conference, Black Isle unveiled Torn. Touted as a "twisting, epic tale of noble allies, vile treachery, vengeful tyrants and maddened gods," Torn will be an entirely 3D RPG built around the brand-new LithTech 3.0 engine.

Although we saw the game at this year's GDC, we wanted to learn a little more about it, so we recently spoke with lead designer David Maldonado about the current state of the game and what kind of features we can look forward to in Black Isle's next big RPG.

IGNPC: Tell us something groovy and new about the world of Torn that we haven't heard yet.

David Maldonado: Hrm, that's a toughie. There's been so much discussion of Torn in interviews, message boards and so on that I'm not sure how many Big New Exciting things can be revealed without letting go of stuff we'd like to save for players to discover on their own.

Well, I don't think the role of gold - the Divine Metal - has been talked about much. In Torn, gold is far more than a precious metal valued for its beauty, malleability and rarity. Gold is also a valuable Alchemical component, a substance nearly identical in structure to the metaphysical fibers that bind the five elements into physical reality (more on this when magic is discussed!). Any permanent transmutation of a physical object - for example, the creation of an enchanted weapon that burns with sorceress fire - requires the consumption of gold... it is used to support the buckling fibers that hold the item's physical form together. The more offensive to reality the change (which often correlates to how powerful the enchantment is), the more gold that the spells involved devour in a slowly fading cloud of glittering, golden motes... without enough gold, the spells will fail, the fibers will break, and the item will cease to exist in a small but rather nasty elemental explosion.

Items may even be constructed so as to draw on the power of gold, consuming the substance as a modern engine would fuel. Golems, for instance, are given massive hearts of shimmering gold (dwarves, too, are said to have hearts of gold: hard and yellow). These golden cores wear down over time depending on how much power the golem consumes... after several difficult battles, one hundred pounds of gold might be rendered down into a single tiny nugget rattling about in the thing's chest. Some more eccentric Alchemists - most often dwarves - have even made enormous weapons that fire gouts of magical energy, consuming rods or blocks of gold with every blast. Ashilde Hlifdottir's infamous Vengeful Apocalypse Cannon (also known as Grudge-Ender), a dwarven siege engine of monstrous proportions that leveled three goblin cities before its self-destruction during its sixth and final firing, was the largest and most ludicrously overpowered of such devices ever committed to record.

IGNPC: What inspired the storyline and structure of the Torn universe?

David Maldonado: I'll do everyone the favor of avoiding the terribly obvious "beer/hallucinogenic drugs" joke. Ah, but by its very mention I've made it, yes? I'm sometimes sly like that, though one might want to replace "sly" with "lame."

Anyhow, the primary idea was to create a high-fantasy world (a prerequisite from day one - it's by far the most popular CRPG setting, despite the raucous cries of slightly jaded developers, reviewers, and some long-time gamers... sorry, guys) that began with a concept simple enough for everyone to get their head around - I mean, Order versus Chaos, who doesn't get that, right? Then it was a matter of plent-o' twists, "tweaks for coolness," unique takes and variants on some old familiar standards, and BOOM: the World of Torn. In nearly all aspects of the world we've strived to create something familiar, yet different. I wanted there to be intriguing details and story for those interested in such, answers to those many questions so often ignored in other settings (e.g. "where the heck do all these orcs come from, and why are they all so angry?!"), background and reasons that made sense and were entertaining to discover and learn about... but most of all, I wanted Torn to be enthralling without having to be totally alien ("In Torn, dwarves live underwater and have tentacles and four eyes and shoot poison spines from their purple gill-sacks!"). I feel that a sense of familiarity and association is a powerful thing, and may be used to heighten a player's emotional experience in the game. If something can be tied into existing imagery (even if only subtly so) and be enhanced by or play off of pre-existing feelings and conceptions within the player, why throw away that extra bit of power at your disposal? In any case, we've tried to make these sundry little details and oddities pervade nearly every aspect of the game and setting (e.g. slightly altered monster stereotypes or player character racial characteristics). Numerous examples of such are already available for consumption at out website...

Regarding specific examples of inspirational stuff... woooo! We've, er, "delightfully acquired" bits from just about everything under the sun: other PC games, pen and paper games, console games, table-top war gaming fluff, films, novels, television, real-world mythology and religion, anecdotes from college, everything. Nothing was safe. I think there's something good to be found in everything - it's just a matter of how it's used - so all manner of stuff has found its way into the world of Torn. What I often tried to do is find out just what the greatest amount of people wanted to see the most badly, and then present it in the best way possible - e.g. I'd hear a lot of "oh, X handles Y so well," and "oh, but I love how Z does W," and then I'd go "Muah-hah-hah!" (under my breath, of course) and jot it all down and vow to make a game that had both. Well, here's that game. Even a good number of Torn's new n' crazy stuff - from story and setting to technical features - are based on something that many people have always wanted, but simply hasn't been implemented yet (or at least to many people's satisfaction).

But you know, in the end, it's really all about one thing: endlessly pleasing a whole big fat mess of gamers. I fear I may have wasted everyone's time with the above babbling when the answer as to what inspired the world of Torn is a simple "gamers - giving as many players as much of what they want as humanly possible."

IGNPC: Was it a group effort, or was the world the creation of a single writer or small group of writers?

David Maldonado: It's sort of odd how the current world of Torn came about... well, not so much odd as twisted, long, and probably even more boring than my usual driveling, if such is possible.

Without going into much detail, I was given a set of directives by Feargus Urquhart, Black Isle Studios' division head. He was clear that he would encourage the sort of mature, gritty setting that we used in Fallout or Planescape: Torment, but didn't want a world that was simply "covered in darkness"... there should places of light, darkness, and a whole lot o' gray in between. He also wanted some sort of clear, over-arching conflict that influenced all things on some level but didn't simply overpower everything. We decided on Order vs. Chaos as it's far less black and white than Good vs. Evil... after all, agents of Order or Chaos could potentially use any means at their disposal to bring about the rise of their cause, meaning that either side has its share of goodies and baddies. Ah, morale ambiguity... good stuff, that.

At that point I used my patented Maldonado Content Leech Attack to suck all the good ideas out of everyone and everything around me (some developers were left as pathetic, whimpering husks; we had to bury their twitching remains out in the back parking lot). I then compiled them all, molded them into a world and story, culled out what poo I could find, and started running it past various members of the division for further comments, suggestions, etc. I really don't feel like I wrote the world of Torn so much as it wrote itself with a bit of poking and prodding on my part (mostly the application of a few nutty design theories that I won't go into here)... it's a great conglomeration of others people's suggestions, a few ideas of my own, and stuff I've simply stolen (unabashedly, too, hah-hah!) to create something that I hope is entirely New and Spiffy.

IGNPC: What do you think working on franchise titles has taught you as a team, and how did that factor into your development of Torn?

David Maldonado: "People like 'em. Profit margins like 'em. It's all Win-Win!"

But to be serious... there's a significant difference between a straight sequel (or set of) and a true franchise (ah, marvel at my talent for stating the obvious!). Sequels can be nice (of course, they can be arse as well...), but I feel that a real franchise - something somehow greater than the sum of the games that make it up - is a thing that most everyone loves to see and be a part of. A sense of continuity and a world far greater than that presented within the game is generally a pretty sweet thing - especially so with CRPG's, as players become increasingly familiar with the world and its inhabitants that they interact with. In fact, CRPG's lend themselves particularly well to such as characters may be carried over from one title to another (even cross-genre... imagine an action-RPG that one could port their favorite RPG character into!), history and events are an important part of game play, and so on.

But enough of that blathering - the quick and dirty of it is that franchises seem to be Quite Good Stuff for everyone involved - gamers, developers, marketing, etc. Knowing that, we'd be fools not to do our very best to create such with Torn. It's our hope that this first title be the start of a spectacularly cool new thing, something that will be in the hearts and minds of fans for a great many years to come.

IGNPC: How much of the world of Torn do you have mapped out at the moment?

David Maldonado: Oh, a decent portion... more than enough for this first game, certainly!

The "high-level" world stuff - the "true" creation story and a number of accepted variants, the general how's and why's of the races, major flora n' fauna, the geography, and so on is worked out to a good extent. As this sort of stuff affects pretty much everything at almost every level, laying out the specifics of individual areas and maintaining continuity is fairly simple.

As for down at the "bottom"... well, naturally things slowly drop in detail as one moves up and away from the game's locales. Orislane and all its history has been mapped out in great detail, Western Agathe (where Orislane is situated) to a little less detail, Agathe as a whole even less, and then the specifics of the Known World in its entirety only to a general degree.

Many things have been intentionally left vague so as to afford other developers working with the world of Torn a good degree of freedom for future projects.

IGNPC: Now that you're heading into 3D realtime, would you like to see the battle system faster and simpler, or are you still planning on focusing on strategy rather than pure speed?

David Maldonado: We're shooting to achieve both... an exciting, fast-paced combat system with plent-o' depth and wacky strategizin' action. Part of this is changing the nature of the strategy involved, of course - for instance, Torn is less about exacting positioning/movement and specific target locations for every attack, and more about one's overall tactics and method of attack... does one use magic to attack directly? To enhance one's offensive abilities indirectly? To defend one's self? Does one go for powerful, hard-to-land blows and count on luck as well as skill to get them through? Try to hamper an opponent's movement, then back away and attack from afar? Sneak into an area and lace it with traps before starting a big brouhaha? We intend combatants to be able to stun foes, knock them down, blind them, hamper their ability to attack effectively, dodge and parry blows, counterattack, absorb some of the mana used in spells against them, fight harder when closer to death, and much, much more. The variety of Special Attacks, Defenses, and Abilities that characters acquire and how they're combined with one another (or those of others, should the protagonist have Companions) will significantly affect every battle and how they play out. However, as all of these can be set before a fight and/or changed on the fly, players should be able to wade through grand battles without having to constantly pause... unless they've eaten a bit too much curry and are constantly running off to the bathroom (as a side note, the quick pacing and uninterrupted flow of combat should be extra-spiffy during multi-player gaming, as there'll be less waiting around for a pal to finish giving orders and un-pause the game).

With the above combined with the wide variety of weapon and equipment functionality (e.g. axes might be clumsier than swords, doing more damage but having less of a chance for Critical Strikes, while "chain" weapons such as whips or segmented swords are easy to strike with but have damage ranges with lower bottom ends than other weapons, while the long reach of polearms gives their bearers a defensive bonus, etc.), the incredible variety of any Companions the protagonist might have, and so on, Torn is looking to have significantly more combat options than Fallout.

For those that aren't particularly interested in tinkering "under the hood," though - playing with the various Attacks and Defenses, carefully planning out their skill sets and such - combat will still be a blast. Characters will get better at running around and beheading nasties on their own, gaining new attack types, new defense types, etc. as a simple matter of progressing through the game - the player simply won't be making a conscious effort to move the character's combat development in a specific direction. On that note, in combat - as with every other aspect of Torn - we're not looking to ever "punish" a player for anything (in this case not bothering to learn all the little nutty intricacies and combinations of the various combat abilities) - we'll just give a bit of an extra reward to those that do!

IGNPC: How are you going to pull off the Fallout "action points" combat in realtime?

David Maldonado: Torn uses a wacky little Recovery System in which Action Points (or AP) are still used as a basis for how much a combatant can do in a given amount of time - for those unfamiliar with the original system, every action someone might take costs a certain amount of Actions Points (referred to as the Action Point Cost or APC) - different characters have different amounts of Action Points that they may spend in each turn, dictating how much that they can do from turn to turn.

Basically, a character must wait a certain amount of time between actions based upon whatever percentage of their total Action Points their last action cost them. This is a rather gross simplification to which there are a number of exceptions - for example moving is always allowed, but prevents further Recovery until movement stops, or quaffing potions or switching equipment may be done at any time but resets the Recovery time - but it'll do for now. So for example, a character with six AP making three-AP attacks and a character with ten AP making five-AP attacks would both attack at the same rate, as they're both expending 50% of their AP with each action.

Essentially, it's the same system as Fallout's but without any slop (slop being those "extra" Action Points at a turn's end that can't be saved/carried over or spent on anything other than a small Armor Class increase). The only exception to this occurs at the extreme ends of the spectrum - combatants with low AP scores taking high-APC actions, or those with very high AP scores taking low APC actions. In such instances a straight turn-based to real-time conversion would produce unplayable results (e.g. the nastier Deathclaws in Fallout would have had to attack many times each second). This means that Recovery Time, if graphed out over the AP to APC ratios, must form a curve rather than a straight line, lessening the impact of extremely high or low ratios (which very few player characters, by the way, will likely ever obtain). This curve is where much of our combat tweaking will take place: creating fun and well-balanced game play across a wide variety of Action Point to Action Point Cost ratios.

IGNPC: Are you planning on using the Torn universe for non-RPG titles?

David Maldonado: Alas, such is not entirely up to me. But those are the plans, yes. I myself would love to use the world of Torn for an action-RPG (whether like the upcoming Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance or along the lines of the Zelda series), a side-scrolling beat-'em-up (a la Final Fight, Warriors of Fate, etc.), strategic war games (turn-based or strategy), heck, even puzzle, gambling, or fighting games ("Diviiiiiine Hammer!" *ka-ka-ka-ka-POW* 27-Hit Combo!). Oh, and that last bit was meant to be three different categories, rather than one zany Puzzle-Gamble-n'-Fight game - though that could certainly be fun, too.

IGNPC: Do you think working within the D&D structure limited how you could make the game you've always wanted to make?

David Maldonado: I feel that's really a matter of personal perception on the part of an individual developer. Myself, I never did or would feel that way - at least not that it was limiting in any particularly strict or severe sense. For me, making a game is more about imparting a certain experience to the player than anything else, and a developer can do such nearly regardless of the setting/genre/rules set/whatever that he or she is working within. For developers to feel otherwise... well, I'd feel that they'd be limiting themselves at that point.

However, that's not to say that certain factors can't make imparting a particular experience more or less difficult. I imagine that few if any developers get to create the games that they've always wanted to, regardless of genre, etc. What with management-enforced adherence to various market trends (not a necessarily bad thing by any means - in fact I'm certain it's saved countless products throughout the history of game development - but it can present obstacles), budgetary and time constraints, and so on... well, these are the things that I find myself struggling with most, not any setting or rules set.

IGNPC: Could you go into how the four part magic system (Order, Chaos, Alchemy and Summoning) will compare and differ from other RPG magic systems?

David Maldonado: From a "story" point of view, magic is closely tied to the world itself - in many settings magic is simply tossed into the mix with little or no explanation, so this alone may well please those players that like to see such in a fantasy world. I'll attempt to explain as briefly as possible:

The physical world is made up of five elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Time (as a side note, Earth is opposed to Air, Fire is opposed to Water, and Time is it's own opposite - wooo, heady stuff, huh?). These elements are bound together by metaphysical fibers of a sort to create what mortals perceive as reality. Order magic sees the caster using mana to channel the effects of Order into the physical world, repairing or building upon the constructs of reality to enhance, heal, create, and "perfect." With Chaos magic, the caster is warping or tearing those fibers through the influence of Chaos, twisting, corrupting or destroying reality by creating imbalances in the nature of things, or simply unleashing pure elemental forces (generally in the direction of one's enemies, and often while cackling maniacally). Alchemical magic uses neither Order nor Chaos but restricts its effects to the purely physical, allowing for the understanding and manipulation of those very fibers that bind reality together... it grants the ability to alter the form of objects, to imbue them with elemental properties by subtly altering their bindings, and more. Summoning magic generally involves the sacrifice of a portion of one's own life force to give form to a being that normally has none in the physical world. These four realms of magic may be used in conjunction with one another in numerous ways, affecting things just as one might logically expect them to - for instance, knowledge of Chaos and Summoning magic would allow a caster to summon beings from the realm of Chaos as well as those ethereal entities that drift about the physical world. Oh, and note that neither Order nor Chaos is intrinsically good or evil - either may be used for any end, so it's the caster that determines their roles in the world.

From a game play standpoint, we've gone with a largely "tried n' true" format for spells with a few twists here and there for good measure:

Order magic: consists largely of healing, protective, and "buffing"-type spells that improve the target's abilities in one way or another... the realm of the typical "cleric" or "priest" archetype. Order is far from entirely defensive however... as "improvement" is Order's forte, it may bolster one's offensive abilities quite nicely. Order itself, in its purest form, can also be quite harmful, ranging in effect from stopping time (ah, Perfect World!) to temporarily "solidifying" physical objects - such as an enemy - in a state of perfect, crystalline Order. Not healthy at all, especially when it's localized to only part of one's body...

Chaos magic: this is a veritable grab bag of crazy elemental attacks, detrimental status afflictions (e.g. poisoning an enemy or turning them to stone), and general reality-bending weirdness like invisibility or charming... the typical "wizard" or "black mage" sort of stuff. Sure to be a fan favorite as the "enemy disintegration factor" is quite high.

Alchemical magic: we really wanted to make Alchemy, normally a goofy sort of quasi-magic, do some supa-cool stuff. It's got good spells on its own, and is very powerful in support of other magic types. With it, casters can "burn" potions in order to create more powerful effects... this is where some of Alchemy's most potent spells are, for example getting extra healing from Healing Potions or using Antidote and Mana Restore potions to create clouds of noxious gas (this is Torn's only form of component-based magic). It can identify mysterious items or creatures, repair damaged or broken items, or enchant them with Order or Chaos magic... even bringing golems to life! A caster may use Alchemy to combine multiple Order or Chaos spells to create "multiple element effect" spells (e.g. attack with searing bolts of molten brass - Earth plus Fire), or to imbue a target with elemental attributes (e.g. a warrior imbued with the Water element would do extra cold damage but take additional heat damage).

Summoning: as mentioned previously, summoning magic usually costs both Mana Points and Hit Points to give some formless thing a shell to affect the physical world with. There are two main types of summoning spells (aside from banishing, which harms summoned creatures dreadfully, and sealing, which works to prevent summoned creatures from being banished): call spells and gate spells. Call spells actually summon an entity that will remain until slain, banished, or it expends its power (all summoned creatures must constantly expend some amount of power to hold their newly acquired "shells" together). There are numerous summoned creatures that behave in different manners - one sort might simply defend the caster, while another works to heal the caster and his or her allies. In contrast, Gate spells open a... well... gate... to allow something that normally shouldn't exist to momentarily poke a ways into a reality and "do its thang." The resulting spells are generally amongst the weirdest in the game, often having the effect of some combination of "normal" spells all at once.

Spells cost Mana Points or MP (and in the case of some Summoning magic, Hit Points) to cast - when a character runs out of MP, "no more spells for them!" until their MP has been restored (whether through rest, a potion, a Special Attack/Defense/Ability that gives or drains Mana Points, etc.). A character's Mana Points are determined in a manner similar to Hit Points - through a combination of statistics, race, and Level. Just as with Hit Points, there is also a skill (Mana Focus) that increases a character's MP total. Oh, and Perks, Traits, and certain items can also affect a character's MP.

Characters don't need to memorize spells - so long as they know the spell in question and meet its various casting requirements (whether skill-based, statistic-based, or MP/HP-based in nature), they may cast it.

As Torn's character development is skill-based and thus classless, any character may meddle about with magic... though some will be better than others as a result of statistics (a high Intelligence and Perception is helpful), race (ogres don't do so well with magic, dwarves excel at Alchemy but little else, halflings make skilled Summoners, elves are prodigious mages, etc.), and so on. Also, one of the key ideas behind these magic types is that the player is free to choose one, none, all, whatever, and be able to support whatever his or her character does (e.g. a warrior that uses Alchemy or Order magic to bolster his attacks, or a rogue that uses Chaos magic to make herself invisible or put her foes to sleep and creep past them). As usual, there are no "punishments" for taking one sort of magic over another (or none at all!), but there are rewards for mastery of one or multiple realms of magic as there are in all skill sets.

IGNPC: You've done well with the whole "sidekick" style of party development, as shown in Planescape and Fallout -- how is that style of party going to be used in Torn? Can we expect the same sort of thing, or do you have new plans?

David Maldonado: "All that and more" is what we're going for, really. We intend for Companions to be semi-autonomous (as those in Fallout) with the sort of depth and level of interaction that those in Planescape: Torment had. They are largely computer-controlled (and I must stress that's not synonymous with "saddled with frustratingly cretinous AI"), though the player may significantly modify their behavior via dialog, commands (orders that the protagonist calls out to Companions without having to enter actual dialog), etc. Learning to work well with various Companions - seeing how they interact with one another and different character types - should be a lot of fun. If a player wants to travel with Companions, part of that decision is selecting the ones that his or her protagonist works with best, accepting both their strengths and weaknesses to form a team that functions as closely to the player's ideal of a "perfect party" as possible. It's more about working with others, rather than commanding a mindless group of automatons - glorified chess pieces - down to their every step and thought. It brings to combat a hint of, dare I say... actual role-playing!

Our "big new thing" for these Companions is the method in which the player communicates with and controls them (keeping in mind that "control" is not a hard and fast thing - many Companions are individuals traveling with the protagonist of their own free will, some of whom will be more or less cooperative depending upon the protagonist's personality, the orders they're given, and so on). In addition to telling them how to behave in dialog, there is a menu- and hot key-driven Command system that allows the player to give Companions commands at any time, changing their behavior instantly. The core idea behind this system is the construction of a number of relatively simple behaviors (e.g. "Attack!") that may be combined to create complex behavior patterns (ah, that elusive emergent complexity). As a result of this system, players can easily understand the commands they give Companions, as well as the numerous combinations of such commands (both within a single Companion or across multiple Companions), and with everything wrapped up in a simple, easy-to-use interface.

In the current system - being implemented and tweaked at this very moment - Companions may be ordered to attack, support, defend themselves, follow (as in "just follow - don't attack, don't cast spells, don't stop to look at that baby someone dropped - JUST FOLLOW"), and remain behind. They may be told to carry these orders out in an aggressive or passive manner (which means different things depending upon the order). Lastly, the commands and manners may often be "leashed" to other Companions, the protagonist, etc. - e.g. support the entire party aggressively, or support another Companion passively. Combined with the different ways individual Companions will want to carry out these commands, there is huge range of options for the player to explore and behaviors and tactics to uncover. I'm sure that players will be finding all sorts of weird combinations that even we miss!

Basically, Companions will follow commands to the best of their ability and/but according to their personality - for example, a berserker-type Companion told to attack aggressively would charge forward into melee, while an assassin type would attempt to hide and then creep about backstabbing or blackjacking foes. A meek priestess-type might support the protagonist by casting beneficial spells on and healing him or her, while a paladin-type would give support by attacking the protagonist's target, then healing the protagonist after the battle or if he or she came close to dying. Again, part of the fun and strategy behind Companions is learning how each one reacts in different situations and using that knowledge to create the ideal team or "party" of adventurers - one in which the members function in the way the player would like, without the player having to control them individually.

I'll spare you all the fancy-sounding examples for now, but there are many - the results we're shooting for are quite promising. Well, OK, just one: command a rogue-type to Aggressively Attack (meaning that he'll sneak about stealthily and attempt to backstab enemies), then command a warrior-type to Passively Support the rogue (meaning that she'll stay very close to the rogue and defend him against all attackers); monsters will see the warrior - but not the rogue, who's hidden via his Stealth skill - and so run to attack the warrior, then get backstabbed by the rogue, then smashed by the warrior, all without the player having to do anything - that's just how they'll work together according to the player's basic commands.

For those curious about the interface for all this, I'll use the above example to illustrate. Let's say that the rogue-type is Companion #2 and the warrior-type is Companion #3. While these orders could be given via a point-and-click Command menu, I'll just go over the current hot key method (don't you love all those "currents" and "intends" that I use? I learned that at the Slippery Weasel Bastard School of Interview Responses). To Command #2 to Attack Aggressively, the player need only hit C, 2, A, A. The protagonist would then do something like point at #2 and say, "Attack aggressively!" (or whatever the player has customized his or her protagonist to say when giving such an order). To Command #3 to Support Passively: #2, the player hits C, 3, S, P, 2. Again, the protagonist will actually give the command in-game and the Companion will move to obey. It's easy as cake, and darned fast too.

IGNPC: Has moving to 3D been a challenge for your team, not only in working with new art and programming, but also in the way an RPG is designed? What habits have you had to change in moving to the new format?

David Maldonado: Hrm, I'm probably not the best person to ask about that. I think the move to 3D has presented a pretty hefty challenge to art and programming, but developers can always overcome such, given time and dedication (especially those nutters that thrive on a good challenge...). As for design... not so much, as it's entirely possible to design a three-quarters isometric game in 3D just as one would in 2D... after all, much of what we were doing in the Infinity Engine with clipping, search maps and so on was simply emulating the features of a three-dimensional environment.

I will say that I would have liked to use/get more out of 3D a little more than we currently are - characters scaling walls, hiding in rafters, etc. (I won't go into more detail as it'll just make me sad, *sniff* *sniff*) - but given our time constraints and admittedly somewhat limited experience with 3D, we've decided to postpone such and make sure that we get all the basics (textures, lighting, camera control, etc.) down right for this first title. We'll save some of the real 3D wackiness for future projects.

IGNPC: Do you think 3D is the future of RPG gaming? What about online RPG gaming?

David Maldonado: I suppose so - in both cases - though I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing. While flash/eye candy and hardware support are generally not the driving forces behind any CRPG, the number of gamers - casual, hardcore (I don't care much for bandying those terms about, but...), or otherwise - looking for such in all their games seems too large to simply ignore. My opinion - one based more on casual observation than any serious research, so please take this as largely uninformed and possibly entirely unqualified - is that anyone that doesn't make that move risks being eventually left behind as technology continues to move in a direction that supports 3D over 2D graphics. However, I imagine that in time (and possibly not much time at all, in the scheme of things) 3D will rise to level at which it has all the pros of 2D artwork (plus it's own wacky extras), and everyone - well... everyone that can afford the machine to run it - will at last be happy. And there also won't be any more famine or disease, and people won't cut you off on the freeway or pee on the toilet seat anymore. OK, so maybe just 3D will finally have all that 2D goodness; I suppose that's enough to hope for. But seriously, I'm already starting to see one of my personal gaming fav's - snazzy hand-drawn 2D artwork a la SFA or Guilty Gear X - starting to appear in early, three-dimensional incarnations... Jet Grind Radio, for instance. It may not be much longer until humanity develops 3D backgrounds that match or surpass the lovingly painted detail and imagery of Planescape: Torment or Icewind Dale, along with everything else that people love about 2D games... and maybe a third eye that shoots rings of psychic power - you know, to control fish or find lost car keys or something.